[MrsLarry]

My husband and I got Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Christmas. Started up the Wii for the first time in a few months, and it says an update is available, so I run the update, restart and BOOM. Error. "The file system is corrupted."

So I spent some time on the phone with Nintendo customer service. After powering down and up the sucker ~5 times to no avail, dude tells me I have to send it in for repair. (It's not under warranty, we got it on the first day they were released 4 years ago, stood outside for 4 hours at midnight at Target - yeah, we loyal Nintendo fans) Then he drops the bomb that it's going to be $85. I was pretty shocked. It seemed to me that the update was very clearly the problem, I didn't do anything to break it, I didn't tinker with it, hack it, or otherwise mistreat it, so I feel like $85 is pretty unfair, out of warranty or not. (My original NES from 1985 still works!!!)

My negotiating skills are mediocre at best, but I do have one move - the damsel in distress. (I know, feminism, blah blah, but hey - it works!) So I start with the loyal Nintendo fans, Spent $XXX dollars in our lifetimes, this is unfair, cute voice, bat eyelashes - VOILA! $40 discount! I would've paid the $85, but the discount is great! Yay for me!

I sent it in today - won't have it back for 2-3 weeks. I really wanted to play Mario.

[sek929]

That sucks but kudos on the use of your feminine wiles to get a discount.

This is the first dead Wii I've ever heard about, my buddys Wii even took a 4 foot drop while running and made it out unscathed.

[The Final Dakar]

Recusing myself.

Also, wrong forum

[ort888]

Consoles today are built like complete crap. They really don't make em like they used to.

All of my 20 year old consoles still work like champs... but anything with a disc drive is no longer functioning.

[Snow-i]

If they didn't build em like crap there would be no money in repairs. I would imagine that Nintendo had an idea of how many they wanted to fail over a certain time period and designed the platform with that in mind. Not too many to piss off customers but enough to rake in some extra dough.

Originally Posted by MrsLarry 

I was pretty shocked. It seemed to me that the update was very clearly the problem

I'm glad you got a discount the update did not necessarily cause the problem, you could have had a latent file system problem that only exposed itself when it restarted. There could have been a corrupt file that is only accessed when it starts so the problem could have happened if you simply power-cycled your Wii. Otherwise, lots of people would be complaining about their Wiis not working after the update.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by ort888 

Consoles today are built like complete crap. They really don't make em like they used to.

They used to be much simpler. This si the price we play for having specialized computers.

Originally Posted by Snow-i 

If they didn't build em like crap there would be no money in repairs.

Give me a break. Bad PR on failed systems outweighs any profit incentive on repairs. The numbers are minuscule, anyway.

[ort888]

There is no money in repairs. There is however someone out there weighing the cost benefit of using cheapo parts vs. the bad publicly of having a console that breaks more often.

[andi*pandi]

That sucks, but glad you got the repair cost down. It's ridiculous when the cost of even looking at the thing is almost half of a new one.

[bstone]

I just plugged in the original NES and a friend and I spent 2 days playing and beating The Legend of Zelda. It was completely epic. We're going to start on Quest 2 on Sunday.

[boy8cookie]

I would've said is something to the effect of: "$85? That's about half of the new Xbox 360 I was thinking about getting."

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by bstone 

I just plugged in the original NES and a friend and I spent 2 days playing and beating The Legend of Zelda. It was completely epic. We're going to start on Quest 2 on Sunday.

The above example shows that an accurate reply for not one but two MacNN Lounge threads is not a chimera.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by bstone 

I just plugged in the original NES and a friend and I spent 2 days playing and beating The Legend of Zelda. It was completely epic. We're going to start on Quest 2 on Sunday.

Is that the side-scrolling Zelda? Never played it or heard anything great about it either.

Now Link to the Past, there's an epic game

Originally Posted by sek929 

Is that the side-scrolling Zelda? Never played it or heard anything great about it either.

The Adventures of Link is the name of the side scrolling Zelda - the second Zelda game. It was ok, but certainly not epic and didn't feel like a LoZ game.

I liked the world it was set in - it felt very expansive, but it was annoying frustrating when you got to the last castle. When you died and ran out of "continues" you had to start way back at the beginning. You had to cross the ocean, go through a few annoyingly dangerous parts just to get back to the last castle and try to try to defeat it all over again.

[brassplayersrock²]

So, THAT’S how you defeat that game1!

[MrsLarry]

The Wii has returned! But we lost all our game data and Miis :

It was faster than I expected, so that's good. I'm glad I wasn't too far into Mario Galaxy 2. Now I'll have to spend the night catching back up.